Monday, May 15, 2017

Thing 30: Flash Cards, Quiz Games and More



Thing 30: Flash Cards, Quiz Games and More
    As the end of the school year approaches, it’s nice to use interactive activities to keep students engaged in lessons. That being said, I thought it’d be perfect to do this “thing” and learn some new ways to motivate students in the final weeks of school.
    I decided to start with Quizlet.  I was familiar with Quizlet in a general sense, but had not explored the new Quizlet Live feature. Students were mentioning it and expressing how much they enjoyed it, so I figured it was time to see what it was all about. After re-setting my Quizlet password and gaining access to the site, I spent some time learning about the basic Quizlet options. I had created an account a long time ago but never used it.  Rather than create my own new Quizlet set, I searched for existing Digital Literacy Quizlets that matched the content I was looking for. I watched the “Quizlet Live” tutorial video to learn how the “Live” feature works. I then gave it a try using the quizlet I had searched for. I created a folder of my own called “Digital Literacy” and saved the Quizlet to that folder for easy access later. I plan to try this out with my students someday this week. I think they will love it!  And I love that Quizlet creates the teams for me, so there’s no arguing and it is totally random.
    Kahoot seems to be quite popular as well, so I wanted to look further into this tool.  It turned out that I needed to create a game for my 4H club, so I decided to use this for that particular activity. (I find that much of what I learn in this Cool Tools course can be applied to both personal and professional settings.) I think you can view the kahoot I created for my canine 4H club by going to https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/541caa16-34ca-42ab-b9af-2fc97d22d4f3 . I will definitely be using Kahoot with all of my classes as well!  I love how it is searchable by topic and that you can use other people’s Kahoots very easily - either as is, or by copying certian questions. A great tool for sure!
    With our District’s migration to all things Google, I thought it would also be helpful and useful to learn how to use Google Forms for quizzes. I read the article Creating Quizzes with Google Forms  and saved it for future reference. I found the directions in this article not completely aligned with how my Google Forms actually worked, but I was able to figure things out for the most part. I believe you can view my sample quiz at https://docs.google.com/a/millbrookcsd.org/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfmXeKU9_VoP97igQUo0gCCb7E-fEs4IfWKlzOi2JzY64QCFg/viewform?usp=sf_link if I did it correctly! I e-mailed it to myself so I could “take” the quiz and learn how the scoring and grading features worked as well. Seemed pretty straight-forward, but I am not yet 100% confident to give this a try yet with actual students. I think I may test it with a small group just to see how the results and feedback look on my end.
    A couple of teachers in my school use Flubaroo and have lead an in-service on how to use it, but I haven’t fully embraced it yet, so I decided to also take a look at how this add-on works. To get started I watched the 3 minute demo to get an overview. The classes I teach are all “pass/fail”, so I didn’t really see a huge relevance to my own teaching for this particular tool, although it’s nice to know it’s available. I would use the Google Forms quiz more as a means of collecting information and for assessment purposes, but not necessarily take it to the level of spreadsheets and Flubaroo grading systems.
    Overall, this was another great “thing” and I definitely will be using Quizlet Live and Kahoot with my classes before the end of this school year!

1 comment:

  1. Great work! I could view the Kahoot, but not the Google form. That's ok though, I'm sure it looks great. :) Flubaroo is great for complex grading, but for most stuff the google option is just fine.

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